High School
by BadWolfInk
Summary: The Avengers are teachers at a high school. AU.
1. Chapter 1

Inspired by a AU idea on tumblr where all the Avengers are teachers at a high school.

* * *

Sometimes Natasha would sit back and wonder why the hell she'd decided to teach high schoolers how to speak foreign languages. And then she'd remember that it was Clint's damn fault for persuading her to take the job. She'd curse him out in Russian, French, and any languages she knew.

She'd heard all the rumors, of course. How her male students thought she was hot and how everyone thought there was a thing between her and Clint. Even the other teachers were taking bets on them.

There wasn't. Not really, anyway. Not anymore.

"What are you doing on your Friday night?" Tony sauntered into her classroom.

"Why do you need to know?"

He sat on the edge of her desk until her glare moved him to sit on a desk in front of her. "I just figured we could, you know, get a drink?" He shrugged. "If you want."

Natasha smirked. "Sorry. I've got plans." She set aside the giant Russian tome she had been reading.

"Date night with Barton?"

"Grading Spanish tests, actually."

"No one grades things on Fridays. And you give speaking exams and grade them on the spot," Tony replied, raising an eyebrow.

"Don't you have a class right now?"

He looked at his watch. "They're taking a test right now."

"I'm sure. Look, go ask Pepper if you want to go out tonight. I'm not going to be the one responsible for dragging your sorry drunk ass out of the bar."

"Hey. I tried." He slid off the desk. "You know who to call," he said as he went back to his room.

"Not you," she muttered. She had a student coming in next block for an exam and Tony had definitely helped contribute to her mood. She might as well give the kid a B (which was probably better than he deserved) and go home early.

Mercifully, the exam didn't last that long, and the student had better pronunciation of Italian verbs than half the class. She had sent him on his way with a B- (feeling generous) and as she turned to go back to her desk to collect her things, a gentle hand touched her shoulder. "Going home?"

She turned to face Clint. "My day is finished. I'm not going to stay another half hour."

"Tony getting on your nerves?"

"Like you wouldn't believe." She went back to getting her stuff together. "Are we still...?"

"Six at yours, yeah. Unless you have other plans."

The barest of smiles flickered across her face. "And if you want help grading those papers, you know I speak English better than you do." She patted his cheek as she walked by. "Lock the door on your way out."


	2. Chapter 2

"We're always going to work together, aren't we?" Natasha asked, putting down her glass of vodka.

"Do mean that in a relationship sense or employment sense?"

She shrugged. "Both. Either. I just...We always dance around it, Clint. Ever since that trip. So why did you ask me to take the job here?"

Clint looked down. "I get worried about about you. All the time." He'd brought her back from a dark place when she was seventeen, and he was the one who kept her from falling back into it even now.

She slid closer to him. "Clint. Look at me. You've paid your dues. I'm the one that owes you. I can do it on my own now, thanks to you."

"Tasha, you don't owe me anything."

She closed her eyes and bumped her nose against his jaw. "I do, and you know it. That's why I do these things, take these damn jobs. Это для вас."

"If you want to quit, I'm okay with it." He wrapped his arms around her.

"I'll finish out the year," she said. "And then we'll see." She squirmed out of his hold to refill her glass then do the same to his.

"Go easy on that, would you?" He pulled his glass away, spilling some of the alcohol onto the table.

Natasha glared at him, dipped her finger into the spill, and licked it off. "That's good vodka," she scolded. "Don't waste it." Then she took his glass and downed it.

"You always could drink me under the table, Tasha." He pushed the now empty glass away.

"That's because I'm Russian," she purred, deciding to drink directly from the bottle now. "And I bet your ass I could drink Tony under the table too. Not that I'm going to try."

He would have told her to stop, but he knew that she could hold her liquor and that she probably wouldn't wake up in the morning with as bad a hangover as he. "I went out with him last week. He gets all handsy when he's drunk. I'm glad you didn't take him up on his offer."

"Feeling jealous, Barton?"

"Feeling a bit drunk, yeah," he replied.

"We can finish our night, if you'd like." She put her own glass down. "If you can't handle late nights and vodka anymore."

He pushed her away gently. "I can handle anything you throw at me, Romanoff. Let's have it out right here."

She won the match, she always did, and it wasn't because he went easy on her. "Should've been the gym teacher," he managed between gasping for breath.

She stood and wiped her hands on her sweat pants. "They wouldn't like that, believe me."

Clint pushed himself off the floor. "No one likes a girl teacher who can outdo them at any exercise related thing." He pulled her into a hug. "Especially me."


	3. Chapter 3

Natasha woke up the next morning with her cheek pressed into Clint's shoulder and his arm draped around her waist. "You take up too much space," she mumbled, kicking his body away.

He retaliated by tightening his grip around her and pulling her with me. "I don't," he said. "You're just not used to this anymore."

_I could get used to it again_, she thought. Instead, she wormed her way out of his grasp and slid out of bed.

"Where're you going?" he asked, rolling to take up the space she'd left free and looking up at her.

"Making coffee and then deciding what I'm going to do for a final exam." She smiled fondly. "I know how you are when you don't get your coffee in the morning."

When he finally got out of her bed, he found her sitting in the recliner with a newspaper and a cup of coffee. "Yours is on the table," she said, not looking up.

He thanked her and took a thoughtful sip. Of course, Natasha always knew how he took his coffee. He sat on the couch and leaned toward her. "You could always do another speaking exam," he suggested.

She shook her head. "I might as well not give one at all. I don't want to spend my summer correcting stupid mistakes. I'm giving up 9 months, that's all." She put the paper aside and looked at him. "What are you doing?"

"Thinking about how much I like your hair when it's down." He realized she was looking at him strange. "Oh! They're writing papers, of course. It's a cumulation of all the books they've had to read this year."

"Boring. Do you really want to read that many papers this summer? Are you even going to get out of your apartment?"

He shrugged. "I'm a teacher now."

"You've changed a lot more than I thought," she said quietly, nursing her mug in her hands.

They were silent for a long moment before Natasha stood. "What do you want to do for breakfast?"

_You, _he thought. "I know a small cafe that's a little hole in the wall," he said instead.

She smiled. "Well then let's get ready to go."

An hour later he was driving her to the little cafe. For the first time in weeks she actually looked happy to be in his presence and living the life she'd committed to for a few months. He decided there might be a chance for them again, somewhere down the line. He'd like to try again. He wondered if she would too.

She accepted his offer to pay for breakfast and too soon he was dropping her back off at her place. "We should do this more often," he said, not knowing what else to say.

"Do what?"

"Spend time together, like this. It's nice." _Shut up, Clint._

"It is nice." Before he knew it, she was leaning toward him and brushing her lips against his, cautious, searching. But before he could react, she was sitting back in her seat, eyeing him.

"Tasha...?" He couldn't find the words. "What...wh—"

"We'll take this as it comes, okay?"

She always had the control, she was always the one measuring the steps, she always had been. He knew that wasn't going to change. So he reached out to brush his fingers against her cheek. "See you Monday?" he asked.

She smiled. "Yeah." And then she left him alone in the parking garage and he wondered how this was going to play out.

If there was one thing he knew was true it was that Natasha was confusing, and she'd always be. And he wondered why exactly she'd taken the teaching job in the first place.


End file.
